When I saw Avatar, there was an ad for the new Percy Jackson movie.

[conuly]

(I am so there. That series is surprisingly not-terrible.)

The guy I was with scoffed at "you were underwater for 7 minutes!!" with "That's not possible", but clearly he doesn't understand the secret filmmaking that indicates "this isn't actually possible, but suspend your disbelief a little". (One wonders how he reacted when he saw trailers for the first ever HP movie, years ago. Broomsticks? Flying? That's not possible!)

As it happens, Greek/Roman mythology is a bigger topic in kidlit than you'd imagine. Aside from the aforementioned Percy Jackson series there's one about Pandora and various deadly sins (or something...), and now there's... this series. It's on Goodreads as a giveaway.

Authors Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams put a modern spin on classic myths with the Goddess Girls series. Follow the ins and outs of divine social life at Mount Olympus Academy, where the most privileged godboys and goddessgirls in the Greek pantheon hone their mythical skills.

Yes, it appears to be a High School AU for Mount Olympus.

...

This is either going to be super sucky or it's going to be SO AWESOME. All it needs is for the "students" to sparkle, right?

There's another one as well. They're both in the First Reads program so I entered.

Persephone often "goes along to get along" instead of doing what she really wants. But when she meets Mount Olympus Academy bad-boy Hades, she finally feels she has found someone with whom she can be herself. He's the first person who actually listens to her, and she finds herself liking him, despite the fact that the other goddessgirls think he's bad news. But if he makes her feel so special -- and so comfortable -- can he really be all that bad?

My goodness. I've never felt so much LOL-ing anticipation towards a book before in my life. If you can snag me a copy when I don't win, I'd very much appreciate it. (I think this is even better than cannibalistic time-traveling mermaids!)

Edit: It turns out - thank you, rho! - that it is definitely possible to hold your breath underwater for well more than seven minutes. I had no idea!

Comments

[rho]

Not to mention the part where the world record for breath-holding is over 11 minutes.

[conuly]

Is it? Well then! (I'm not likely to tell him. I realized it's a waste of time to spend time with people who are so attached to their own opinions that you can't even have a conversation with them. I'm already attached to my own opinions, so two of us? Not working.)

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

"But if he makes her feel so special -- and so comfortable -- can he really be all that bad? "

I wanna read this with a firey passion of firey doom, n stuff.

[conuly]

You and me both.

[ncp.livejournal.com]

What, nothing about her awful mom Demeter who doesn't understaaaaaand and is trying to keep her away from her dream man?

[conuly]

That was the first paragraph, I just didn't quote it.

[conuly]

And they're all in middle school, I assume, because this is presented as a book for "tweens", so... yeah.

[ncp.livejournal.com]

At least the moral will be "listen to your parents, they know what they are talking about".

This seems like the kind of book that would have a heavy-handed moral.

[ncp.livejournal.com]

Or, even better, a thinly-disguised handbook on how NOT to get involved in an abusive relationship.

[conuly]

Might not be. It might be "Wow, he's really a nice guy and everybody was wrong!!" and she wins them all over with the power of wuv. I have no idea!

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Gah, how many times have I seen Hellenists or other people trying to reinterpret the Persephone thing, like "She ate those seeds on purpose to become an independent adult and now she's a queen!" Um, yeah, you can read the story as one about the transition process when a child leaves the home, cleaves to another, etc, but a) she was kidnapped which is not how it works and b) she got to be queen OF A REALLY SHITTY KINGDOM.

[conuly]

I 'unno, kingdom of the dead, sooner or later we're all her subjects, aren't we?

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's dark and cold and boring, and Hades is always depressed... I wouldn't always say being Queen of the Dead was a bad gig, but I never got a very positive impression from Greek descriptions of the underworld.

[conuly]

Well, there's the Elysium Fields to frolic in, aren't there? It's not all boring boring or torture torture.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

True, but I never heard about Hades or Persephone spending much time there. It's just sit around in the gloomy throne room, watch Rhadamanthus hand out the sentences, maybe give Cerberus a scratch behind the ear, and the ear, and the ear...

[conuly]

Well, yeah, that's the stuff that makes it into the books, sure. But how much of history is totally unrecorded?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It's possible for a trained free-diver to be underwater for more than 7 minutes, but unless the movie is about someone who is a trained free-diver, or who otherwise has an established, plausible reason for having the ability, that sort of thing entirely wrecks the suspension-of-disbelief.

It's like having a normal-ordinary-person character suddenly, inexplicably being able to do the kind of stuff they do in Cirque du Soliel. Sure, it's possible for people to do that, but only a few people, and the reason why they can is because they've devoted an astonishing amount of time and effort to learning how.

HP is not about a normal-ordinary person. The entire premise of the series is that it's about people who are not normal or ordinary; who are born with all kinds of abilities that normal-ordinary people don't have (and can't learn) and who have an entire hidden society based on magic. If you accept that premise, everything else follows perfectly naturally from it: flying broomsticks, dragons, dementors, the works.

Note that people who can't suspend their disbelief in such a premise generally have no interest in fantasy and don't comprehend how anyone else could take such childish tommyrot at all seriously. One can't really explain it to them, either - it's like being tone-deaf or color-blind; File Not Found.

But that's not the same thing as over-loading the Suspension Bridge of Disbelief with unexplained anomalies until it collapses. If the character is supposed to be a normal-ordinary person, he or she can't suddenly manifest a super-power (like being able to stay underwater 7 minutes) out of the blue for no adequately-explored reason. If the character is an extraordinary person, there are still limits.

Sure, Harry Potter can fly on a broomstick - the fact that he can do this is intrinsic to the plot and perfectly adequately explained within its context, i.e. Harry is a wizard from a whole society of wizards. But now imagine that he gets knocked off his broomstick in some exciting scene... and it doesn't matter, because suddenly he can fly just fine without one. No plausible reason given; you're just supposed to suspend your disbelief. Wouldn't that wreck the whole thing?

I say it's lazy film-makers, who can't be arsed to put some thought into plausibility and continuity, who do this sort of thing. It's the same as "God-moding" in a roleplaying game, where a character is invincible because no matter what happens he's got another Amazing Ability he can pull out of his butt-of-holding. Basically, it's a form of cheating.

[conuly]

It's possible for a trained free-diver to be underwater for more than 7 minutes, but unless the movie is about someone who is a trained free-diver, or who otherwise has an established, plausible reason for having the ability, that sort of thing entirely wrecks the suspension-of-disbelief.

He's the son of Poseidon, so... yeah.

And if the whole movie didn't explain that part, that's one thing, but what did he think, that they were going to show him doing this amazing thing WITHOUT having a reason for it?